The capability of generating and delivering to users voice messages under program control is well known in the art. Examples thereof are voice-mail systems and interactive voice recognition (e.g., programmed conversation) systems. These systems are designed from the start to have the capability of delivering voice messages under program control to persons.
There also exist varieties of software applications (such as source code control systems, database managers, maintenance request tracking systems, CAD/CAM systems, CASE tools, etc.) which may, upon detecting some event or condition (such as a change to a schematic diagram or software component, deletion of a database record, creation of a maintenance request, etc.) wish to deliver a voice-mail message or some other type of message to one or more persons as a way of notifying the persons of the detected event or condition. Conventional application program interfaces (APIs) to messaging systems typically provide functional interfaces that enable software processes to interact with the messaging systems and cause delivery of the desired messages. However, in order to enable the software processes to use the APIs, normally new and non-trivial software must be written for each application which desires to use this service. Furthermore, the APIs normally provide little or no support for the administration and maintenance (e.g., creation, modification, and deletion) of the notification messages. Hence, adaptation of an application to enable it to send mail-system messages to humans is typically a substantial task, and one that must be repeated anew for each application.